EXCL: Di Bonaventura on Beverly Hills Cop 4

Later this month, Bruce Willis will be returning as the popular Detective John McClane in Live Free or Die Hard, but who knows if that movie would ever have happened if Eddie Murphy hadn’t brought comedy into the police action genre with Beverly Hills Cop?

When ComingSoon.net had a chance to talk with mega-producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura about his upcoming movies Transformers and Stardust, we also wanted to find out where things stand with a possible fourth installment in the action-comedy franchise with which he’s been involved. “‘Happening’ would be too strong a word, but we are working on a take,” he told us. “We have not hired a writer yet, but we’ve been analyzing the franchise and asking lots and lots of people about Alex Foley. ‘What do you love about Axel and what would you want to see with an Axel Foley movie?’ I think we have enough information now that we’ll probably be hiring a writer in the next four to eight weeks and taking a good shot at it.”

But is Eddie Murphy still interested and on board with revisiting the character? “It’s one of his favorite characters and as he told me, it’s a character that his fans come up to him often and mention to him. ‘When are you going to do Axel? What about Axel?’ In a way for me, it’s less ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ and more Axel Foley what I get excited about.”

Di Bonaventura also told us the premise of Nowhereland, the upcoming comedy that he’s doing with Eddie Murphy, which starts preproduction soon, and it sounds like it could offer some great humor from the versatile comic. “It’s a father-daughter story, and it has a lot of wonder in it. It examines, hopefully in a very fun way, the trials and tribulations of learning to become a parent. As much as it’s a kids story, in a way, it’s as much about the adults trying to figure out, ‘How do you become a dad?’ It’s hard for us. I’m a parent, and I’ll say it was a real learning curve for me, and we’re going to have fun with that learning curve.”

Look for more with Mr. Di Bonaventura leading up to the release of his two summer movies, Transformers on July 3 and Stardust on August 10.